See our most recent update on Xiamen’s economy.
PART 1 Background
Xiamen, located on the southwest coast of China, is administrated as a sub-provincial city (others are Shenzhen, Qingdao, Dalian, Ningbo and 10 capital cities) of Fujian Province, and became Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in 1980 enjoying the preferential policies. With its natural location privilege (next to Taiwan Strait) and rapid development of diverse industries, in Oct 1992, Xiamen Free Trade Zone (FTZ) was set up by the State Council of the P.R.C to activate Xiamen economy, enjoying special policy of “Free of Licenses, Duty-Free and Bonded”, according to the reference to operation of the present world Free Trade Zone, which results in a new Xiamen with widest openness, the most flexible operation system and the most preferential investment policies. Meanwhile, named as “the Best Habitable City” in the world, Xiamen has attracted over 5000 FDI projects, among which 39 come from “Fortune 500”, and gathered huge amounts of talented person here to create a more prosperous environment. After 30 years’ construction, Xiamen has been undoubtedly the most dynamic economic area, not only because of diverse industries, including fishing, shipbuilding, food processing, tanning, textiles, machine tool manufacturing, chemical industries, telecommunications, and financial services, but also busy harbors that contain billions of dollars.
PART 2 Brief introduction
As is seen from figure 1, Xiamen’s GDP from 501.87 units quintupled to 2535.8 units (100 million RMB) in 10 years with steady increment every year. Slight increase from 2007 to 2009 can be attributed to the worldwide economy crisis which put off its pace of development in international trade area. From 2009 to 2011, a distinctive growth of 400 units appeared to demonstrate that economy has already been recovered. To have a clearer understanding of the structure of Xiamen’s GDP, figure 2 illustrates well on GDP is mainly composited by the second industry and the third industry covering average 50% each, and the first industry (agriculture) always occupied no more than 5%, so Xiamen is an absolute industrial city with developed service areas. The climbing trend of the third industry from 2004 to 2009can be contributed to real estate bubble in China market, and the economy crisis in 2008 shook the second industry obviously so that it decreased unprecedentedly, but in less than 1 year, it turned back to a normal level, and it proved to have a strong flexibility and adaptability owing to huge domestic demand and government support, especially the policy about trade with Taiwan, for Xiamen shoulders the historical task to improve economical cooperation with Taiwan companies and promote cross-strait relationships.
More information about Economy of Xiamen from 2000 to 2011
